The early Church saw the Trinity not as a puzzle, but as a pattern of love—threefold self-giving, flowing endlessly. This post explores that vision and how to enter it through contemplation.
Damn, Alek, you've got me again. I'm not a Christian mystic but a poor poet, farmer and environmentalist but the divine three runs through me and shapes my view. My poem, The Three Lovers, is not about the trinity but there are echoes, when I wrote it not one thought of the Trinity entered my head but now, maybe, I see this sacred loving relationship as an archetype. Thanks for the post, every day is a contemplative day.
Certainly closer to the earth, just been washing it off! I can confirm that being a poet, farmer and environmentalist has not helped me understand theology nearly as much as reading Alek's posts.
Well, maybe not the fancier stuff, but...reminds me of a story I'd heard about a -- bishop? Cardinal? Anyway, some higher-level cleric type, who'd heard of a bunch of hermits on a deserted island that were supposed to be really holy, even though they hadn't gone officially through a seminary or such, and didn't even know the Lord's Prayer! Well, he was determined to teach them that, to help them out, and his ship that he'd planned to take for his own travels would be passing by this island. Perfect! :)
So, they get there, and while the crew was foraging for supplies (or maybe they dropped him off for a bit; it's been awhile since I'd heard it), he earnestly teaches these dudes the Lord's Prayer, until they have it memorized. The crew (or the ship) come back; it's time for the priest to go, and he has them all lined up on the beach, reciting the Lord's Prayer, promising him they'd remember it. Big smiles and waves all around.
Later on in the evening, he's out on deck, admiring the stars, when there's splashing in the ocean alongside the ship. He looks down, and there's the hermits, running on the water, chasing after the ship, dismayed that they'd forgotten it and needed a refresher... ;-)
They hadn't needed all that official processing to be closer to the divine. :)
Ah, Nancy, you just brought a barefoot gospel to a council of sandal-wearing theologians.
Your retelling of that tale is the perfect counterpoint to the Cappadocian Father brain party I posted. While Basil, Gregory, and Gregory were busy defining homoousios and getting lost in divine processions, your three hermits were already doing the thing—walking on water because they’d never been told they weren’t qualified.
That’s the kind of Trinitarian theology the desert breathes. No need to diagram perichoresis when you’re dancing in it barefoot.
Blessed are the forgetful, for they shall remember what matters.
Monkboy! I think I must’ve been taught this at one point because it’s so familiar to me. It’s very close to the Catholic concept I learned, but it is somehow more complete - and Kenosis is such a comforting concept. Do I need to become a monk to learn more - or just meditate more? (This is a serious question)
Susana, you don’t need to become a monk—just stay curious.
What you’re recognizing is spot-on. The idea of kenosis—God as self-emptying love—is deeply woven into Christian theology. What I laid out in that post isn’t esoteric or hidden; it’s actually pretty foundational stuff once you get familiar with the Cappadocian Fathers. They were the ones who gave us the framework for the Trinity in the first place.
What might feel “more complete” is just that the language of kenosis gives clearer expression to something the tradition has always pointed toward: that God isn’t a distant authority figure, but a relational flow of giving and receiving. Once that clicks, a lot of things that felt abstract start to feel… human.
So no vows needed. Just keep following that thread.
And if meditation helps you stay tuned in—do that.
As a former Catholic, I love the trinity and Law of 3. The 3 faces of Goddess - maiden, mother, crone. These days, I’m working with how it is embedded into the architecture of the enneagram. Thanks for these thoughts. Sparked some inspiration for my novel today.
This was a blessing and a beautiful reminder for me of having read about kenosis and some of the Fathers and the early Church as a now former Orthodox (in current practice, at least). Thank you. :)
I find it fascinating that I was looking over some pasts post and then this popped into my feed for the second time in a few days. I way you explain things and break them down into bit size morsels of love and grace is wonderful.
If you get a moment, I wrote a poem containing the Trilogy, it's called Rise and Shine! published on May 20th. Your insight would be greatly appreciated. An act of remembering and letting it from through me onto the page.
I haven’t read it yet, but I’m vaguely familiar with her take from Eye of the Heart—where she frames the Trinity not as a doctrine to memorize, but as a kind of transformation engine rooted in the Law of Three. The little I’ve picked up has already reshaped how I think about divine flow and inner work. Definitely on my list to dive deeper.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, “Your Kingdom Come” we are praying that the inner life of God will become our inner life as well. That to me, is thrilling, and there is more. This is the Gospel of the Kingdom, that God invites us into the relationship of His life, Trinity, not to mimic how He loves but to become love as He, as Trinity IN love, IS love. So the whole point - our Maker making good humans - is to reproduce the Trinity in human community - His doing not ours. God’s reality is now ours and our reality is now His. But what is love? God’s love is not natural but supernatural love. This is not to gain an experience of God that brings complete satisfaction now (we won’t fully enjoy Him until we see Trinity face to face) but the hope (remember Paul’s vision for the Galatians, “until Christ is formed in you”) of becoming more like Christ, to love like Jesus does, to further God’s Kingdom in the world, so as to delight the Father.
Yes, Andy. You’re naming something profoundly true—and also incomplete in the way only a heart on the cusp of deep recognition can be.
When we pray “Your Kingdom come,” we are not merely inviting God's inner life to become ours—we are awakening to the truth that it already is. As the Gospel of Mary reminds us, “The Son of Man is within you. Follow him.” Not as an external guide, but as the presence of divine being already seeded in your depths.
This is not about striving toward an ideal of love, but surrendering to the Love that is. The Trinity is not a model to replicate but a flow to participate in—a dynamic of giving, receiving, and yielding that pulses through the core of everything. When we sit in stillness, when we consent to this presence within, the boundaries begin to dissolve. Your life begins to be lived from God, rather than for God.
The Kingdom is not a distant promise, but a present unfolding. It comes not with spectacle, but with surrender. Not with certainty, but with trust. We become love not by effort, but by allowing the blocks to love in us to fall away.
And yes, it is thrilling. But also sobering. Because once we glimpse this, we are invited into responsibility—not to preach it, but to embody it. To walk it into the world in the shape of our daily lives. To be, as Mary was, a carrier of resurrection without title, permission, or institutional backing—just the boldness of inner knowing and the willingness to follow the truth where it leads.
The Kingdom is already here, already within. Now comes the path of remembering it, over and over, until that remembering becomes our way of being.
Andy, I’m not interested in hiding behind fog and mist. But I’m also not here to pretend the Kingdom is something that needs to be summoned like a genie from a bottle.
The Son of Man already exists. The Kingdom is within. This isn’t poetry, it’s the architecture of reality Jesus pointed to, and Mary recognized.
You talk about “being formed,” like it’s some gradual moral upgrade, as if we’re downloading Christ-likeness in slow patches over time. But that’s still dualistic. Still chasing. Still treating the Trinity like a model we’re trying to copy rather than the life we already participate in.
The fog on my About page? That’s not evasion. That’s a boundary. A way of signaling that not every seeker is ready to stop seeking. That until you realize the Kingdom is already present, already pulsing within your very breath, no amount of tidy doctrine will help.
You want formation? Start with recognition. The “not yet” doesn’t make sense until you realize the “already” has always been true.
The only thing keeping the Kingdom from being visible is our addiction to looking elsewhere.
This space is about ideas, not identities. None of my subscribers seem confused or concerned—likely because they came to engage the substance, not audit the author. You’re the one pivoting away from the conversation to question the container it came in.
If the content challenges you, that’s worth exploring. If it doesn’t resonate, you’re free to keep scrolling.
But asking “Why hide?” when nothing is being hidden starts to look less like concern and more like disruption.
Andy, I’m noticing something here. Instead of engaging the actual points I raised about the Kingdom, the Trinity, or Mary’s witness, the conversation has veered into whether or not you can trust me based on my About page.
That’s a shift in terrain. It’s a pivot away from substance into optics. A red herring. If something I said doesn’t hold water, let’s talk about that. But whether or not I’ve shared a personal bio has nothing to do with the truth of the ideas on the table.
I didn’t ask for your trust, and I’m not asking for it now. I’m not selling anything. I’m not recruiting. You came into my post, offered your thoughts, and I responded in kind.
If the mystery unsettles you, that’s worth sitting with. Not because I’m being evasive, but because sometimes we expect clarity to precede trust, when often it’s the other way around.
The way you explain God feels so much more real than the old-fashioned fire & brimstone version!
So good. I just love the way you share past the dogma and doctrine to the heart of the real.
Damn, Alek, you've got me again. I'm not a Christian mystic but a poor poet, farmer and environmentalist but the divine three runs through me and shapes my view. My poem, The Three Lovers, is not about the trinity but there are echoes, when I wrote it not one thought of the Trinity entered my head but now, maybe, I see this sacred loving relationship as an archetype. Thanks for the post, every day is a contemplative day.
Dude! I think that being a "poet, farmer and environmentalist" might get you closer than most of the rest of us to understanding this stuff! :)
Or at the very least, closer to the earth, which is also a loving creation. :)
Certainly closer to the earth, just been washing it off! I can confirm that being a poet, farmer and environmentalist has not helped me understand theology nearly as much as reading Alek's posts.
Well, maybe not the fancier stuff, but...reminds me of a story I'd heard about a -- bishop? Cardinal? Anyway, some higher-level cleric type, who'd heard of a bunch of hermits on a deserted island that were supposed to be really holy, even though they hadn't gone officially through a seminary or such, and didn't even know the Lord's Prayer! Well, he was determined to teach them that, to help them out, and his ship that he'd planned to take for his own travels would be passing by this island. Perfect! :)
So, they get there, and while the crew was foraging for supplies (or maybe they dropped him off for a bit; it's been awhile since I'd heard it), he earnestly teaches these dudes the Lord's Prayer, until they have it memorized. The crew (or the ship) come back; it's time for the priest to go, and he has them all lined up on the beach, reciting the Lord's Prayer, promising him they'd remember it. Big smiles and waves all around.
Later on in the evening, he's out on deck, admiring the stars, when there's splashing in the ocean alongside the ship. He looks down, and there's the hermits, running on the water, chasing after the ship, dismayed that they'd forgotten it and needed a refresher... ;-)
They hadn't needed all that official processing to be closer to the divine. :)
Ah, Nancy, you just brought a barefoot gospel to a council of sandal-wearing theologians.
Your retelling of that tale is the perfect counterpoint to the Cappadocian Father brain party I posted. While Basil, Gregory, and Gregory were busy defining homoousios and getting lost in divine processions, your three hermits were already doing the thing—walking on water because they’d never been told they weren’t qualified.
That’s the kind of Trinitarian theology the desert breathes. No need to diagram perichoresis when you’re dancing in it barefoot.
Blessed are the forgetful, for they shall remember what matters.
—Virgin Monk Boy
Ah, yes, simple is good in theology, for me anyway, good story as well
Monkboy! I think I must’ve been taught this at one point because it’s so familiar to me. It’s very close to the Catholic concept I learned, but it is somehow more complete - and Kenosis is such a comforting concept. Do I need to become a monk to learn more - or just meditate more? (This is a serious question)
🤓
Susana, you don’t need to become a monk—just stay curious.
What you’re recognizing is spot-on. The idea of kenosis—God as self-emptying love—is deeply woven into Christian theology. What I laid out in that post isn’t esoteric or hidden; it’s actually pretty foundational stuff once you get familiar with the Cappadocian Fathers. They were the ones who gave us the framework for the Trinity in the first place.
What might feel “more complete” is just that the language of kenosis gives clearer expression to something the tradition has always pointed toward: that God isn’t a distant authority figure, but a relational flow of giving and receiving. Once that clicks, a lot of things that felt abstract start to feel… human.
So no vows needed. Just keep following that thread.
And if meditation helps you stay tuned in—do that.
Good!
As a former Catholic, I love the trinity and Law of 3. The 3 faces of Goddess - maiden, mother, crone. These days, I’m working with how it is embedded into the architecture of the enneagram. Thanks for these thoughts. Sparked some inspiration for my novel today.
...not a committee... How many preachers have made that mistake?!
This was a blessing and a beautiful reminder for me of having read about kenosis and some of the Fathers and the early Church as a now former Orthodox (in current practice, at least). Thank you. :)
Nicely written Alek…is that Your Voice when I Listen and/or AI 🤖?? I love the
Cappadocians’….Especially St. Basil 🌿 the Great😇I have a slip of paper that I’ve stuck to my table for years from Him.
“Standing next to Each Believer is an Angel As A Protection “🪽🪽🪽
😇 St. Basil the Great
Thanks for the Kenosis Embodiment🌬️
Hello Alek
I find it fascinating that I was looking over some pasts post and then this popped into my feed for the second time in a few days. I way you explain things and break them down into bit size morsels of love and grace is wonderful.
If you get a moment, I wrote a poem containing the Trilogy, it's called Rise and Shine! published on May 20th. Your insight would be greatly appreciated. An act of remembering and letting it from through me onto the page.
I assume you have read Cynthia Bourgeault's book on the Trinity
I haven’t read it yet, but I’m vaguely familiar with her take from Eye of the Heart—where she frames the Trinity not as a doctrine to memorize, but as a kind of transformation engine rooted in the Law of Three. The little I’ve picked up has already reshaped how I think about divine flow and inner work. Definitely on my list to dive deeper.
I have read the first half. Highly recommended.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, “Your Kingdom Come” we are praying that the inner life of God will become our inner life as well. That to me, is thrilling, and there is more. This is the Gospel of the Kingdom, that God invites us into the relationship of His life, Trinity, not to mimic how He loves but to become love as He, as Trinity IN love, IS love. So the whole point - our Maker making good humans - is to reproduce the Trinity in human community - His doing not ours. God’s reality is now ours and our reality is now His. But what is love? God’s love is not natural but supernatural love. This is not to gain an experience of God that brings complete satisfaction now (we won’t fully enjoy Him until we see Trinity face to face) but the hope (remember Paul’s vision for the Galatians, “until Christ is formed in you”) of becoming more like Christ, to love like Jesus does, to further God’s Kingdom in the world, so as to delight the Father.
Yes, Andy. You’re naming something profoundly true—and also incomplete in the way only a heart on the cusp of deep recognition can be.
When we pray “Your Kingdom come,” we are not merely inviting God's inner life to become ours—we are awakening to the truth that it already is. As the Gospel of Mary reminds us, “The Son of Man is within you. Follow him.” Not as an external guide, but as the presence of divine being already seeded in your depths.
This is not about striving toward an ideal of love, but surrendering to the Love that is. The Trinity is not a model to replicate but a flow to participate in—a dynamic of giving, receiving, and yielding that pulses through the core of everything. When we sit in stillness, when we consent to this presence within, the boundaries begin to dissolve. Your life begins to be lived from God, rather than for God.
The Kingdom is not a distant promise, but a present unfolding. It comes not with spectacle, but with surrender. Not with certainty, but with trust. We become love not by effort, but by allowing the blocks to love in us to fall away.
And yes, it is thrilling. But also sobering. Because once we glimpse this, we are invited into responsibility—not to preach it, but to embody it. To walk it into the world in the shape of our daily lives. To be, as Mary was, a carrier of resurrection without title, permission, or institutional backing—just the boldness of inner knowing and the willingness to follow the truth where it leads.
The Kingdom is already here, already within. Now comes the path of remembering it, over and over, until that remembering becomes our way of being.
Oh I don’t think I’m on the cusp of anything deep, but transformation, yes. All Christian’s are being formed, now and not yet, to Christ-likeness.
Why all the fog and mist on your About page?
Andy, I’m not interested in hiding behind fog and mist. But I’m also not here to pretend the Kingdom is something that needs to be summoned like a genie from a bottle.
The Son of Man already exists. The Kingdom is within. This isn’t poetry, it’s the architecture of reality Jesus pointed to, and Mary recognized.
You talk about “being formed,” like it’s some gradual moral upgrade, as if we’re downloading Christ-likeness in slow patches over time. But that’s still dualistic. Still chasing. Still treating the Trinity like a model we’re trying to copy rather than the life we already participate in.
The fog on my About page? That’s not evasion. That’s a boundary. A way of signaling that not every seeker is ready to stop seeking. That until you realize the Kingdom is already present, already pulsing within your very breath, no amount of tidy doctrine will help.
You want formation? Start with recognition. The “not yet” doesn’t make sense until you realize the “already” has always been true.
The only thing keeping the Kingdom from being visible is our addiction to looking elsewhere.
You’re absolutely right and that’s because of the point of transparency.
Why hide?
A faceless Substack that speaks of Trinity, love, relationality, seems very odd to me.
Andy, it’s not about hiding. It’s about focus.
This space is about ideas, not identities. None of my subscribers seem confused or concerned—likely because they came to engage the substance, not audit the author. You’re the one pivoting away from the conversation to question the container it came in.
If the content challenges you, that’s worth exploring. If it doesn’t resonate, you’re free to keep scrolling.
But asking “Why hide?” when nothing is being hidden starts to look less like concern and more like disruption.
Why all the mystery on your About page?
The lack of transparency doesn’t build trust with me that I’m having a conversation with a person as I have no idea who you are.
Can you appreciate this reasoning?
Andy, I’m noticing something here. Instead of engaging the actual points I raised about the Kingdom, the Trinity, or Mary’s witness, the conversation has veered into whether or not you can trust me based on my About page.
That’s a shift in terrain. It’s a pivot away from substance into optics. A red herring. If something I said doesn’t hold water, let’s talk about that. But whether or not I’ve shared a personal bio has nothing to do with the truth of the ideas on the table.
I didn’t ask for your trust, and I’m not asking for it now. I’m not selling anything. I’m not recruiting. You came into my post, offered your thoughts, and I responded in kind.
If the mystery unsettles you, that’s worth sitting with. Not because I’m being evasive, but because sometimes we expect clarity to precede trust, when often it’s the other way around.